Buckles for receiving the engagement member of a rear safety restraint are usually required to be flexible in all directions. This ensures comfort for the rear seat passenger, regardless of his position on the rear seat, whilst allowing the rear seat to be folded easily, for example to expand the rear load area of a car. Further-more, it is necessary to ensure suitable application of the load on the restraint under vehicle deceleration regardless of the size, weight or position of the passenger.
A common solution is to attach the buckle to the vehicle floor panel using a length of flexible webbing, for example similar to that used to provide the safety restraint strap. Such webbing is usually secured to the floor panel by a mounting bracket bolted onto the panel. This is usually positioned close to the required location of the buckle. However, the length of webbing between the buckle and the bracket must be sufficient to allow for a strong enough stitching pattern where the ends of the webbing overlap and are to be secured together. Also, the length of webbing must provide enough flexibility to accommodate various shapes and sizes of passenger and to allow for the rear seat to be folded. This leads to an undesirably long length of webbing which allows a large distance of travel of the buckle in the forward direction before bearing the load of the safety restraint. Consequently, undesirable forward movement of the occupant occurs. A ring on the mounting bracket for the buckle webbing may be offset in a forward direction from the required position of the buckle, but in order to provide the required length of webbing between the ring and the buckle, the problem of unrestrained movement remains. Furthermore it may be possible for the ring to be felt through the seat by the passenger, which is evidently detrimental to the comfort of the passenger.
It is also known to alleviate this problem by running the length of webbing from a ring at the rear of the bracket underneath the body of the bracket. Whilst this removes the problem of forward movement of the buckle, the bracket bolt must now pass through the webbing, such that the webbing is effectively locked by the bolt and the load is applied to only half of the webbing length, thus correspondingly reducing the strength of the assembly.